I'm sure something could be worked out to include an extra 5 years of contribution in the next negociations.
With reference to pensions … a pension is limited (within the bounds of legislation) only to what you can negotiate.
For instance, you can go beyond the AC plan’s 35 year maximum and have no restriction on the number of years of Pensionable Service; e.g., if you work 39 years and 6 months, then you are eligible for a pension based on 39 years and 6 months of service.
You can have your pension based on your best 36 months Final Average Earnings instead of the more restrictive best 60 months as is the case in the AC pilot’s plan.
You can have a pension rule wherein you can elect 100% survivor benefit for your spouse, instead of the 60% restriction in the AC pilot’s plan.
You can have a pension rule written into the plan that provides for indexation, and one that can’t be taken away from you in arbitration, as was the case with the AC pilots who lost their indexation “agreement” with the employer because it was held outside the plan text. Etc., etc.
All you need is a little imagination and resolve to make things better. You just have to want to do so. The OCP pilots negotiated the above-mentioned benefits to their pension plan more than 20 years ago, but ACPA wanted nothing to do with the OCP Pension Plan in the aftermath of AC merging CP into their operation. That fortress mentality turned out to be very telling in terms of what the future was to hold for all of us. Its position on mandatory retirement today serves to demonstrate that not much has changed within the walls of the fortress.
Pity. Things could be so much better for everyone if only for a moment they could see fit to stop boiling their oil and drop the drawbridge. Because as they are soon to discover, once you’ve run out of oil … then what?